William Scarrow, Master Mariner: Certificates and Claims

This section details the certificates, and claims for these certificates of William Scarrow. The certificates themselves do not give a great deal of information, but the claims show a summary of the service of the mariner up to that point - in the case of William, the two claims show voyage details from 1836 to 1856, although there are one or two small conflicts between the two.

Mates Certificate of Service

The original Certificates of Service were produced in duplicate, one of which was retained by the mariner, and the other which kept by the ministry and today referred to as the office copy. The latter certificate is held by the National Maritime Museum, and digital copies can be viewed on ancestry.com. William's certificate is shown below:

Mate's Certificate of Service, William Scarrow, issued July 4th 1851

In order to obtain the certificate, the mariner had to show some proof of his experience and collate this into a claim. This claim has also been preserved at the National Maritime Museum, and William Scarrow's is shown here:

William Scarrow's Claim for a Mates Certificate of Service

Master's Certificate of Competency

From 1850 onwards, any promotion required the recipient to obtain a certicate which showed the relevant competency had been obtained. As with the Certificates of Service these were also produced in duplicate, and the copy kept by the ministry has also been preserved at the National Maritime Museum. Again, a digital copy can be viewed on ancestry.com.

In William's case, he was already qualified as a mate due to his service prior to 1850, but needed to obtain a Master's certificate to gain employment in that role. William gained his Master's Certificate of Competency in 1856 and this is shown below:

Master's Certificate of Competency, William Scarrow

For the Certificate of Competency, the candidate would have had to have sat exams as well as providing details of his service up to that point. A section of William's application for Master is shown below:

William Scarrow's Testimonials for Master's Application, 1856

To view the next page about William Scarrow which deals with his voyage record, click here.